From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:21:22 +0000

>I'm interested in how Rick would answer the following question: given
>that Green OA articles are usually not the version of record, are you
>content to cancel subscriptions knowing that scrupulous faculty
>members will need to consult the version of record in quoting from an
>article and that, therefore, you would not be supplying everything
>that such faculty members need?  I am referring here, of course, to
>journals "closer to the center of our interests," not to ones "near
>the periphery."

As I said before, the closer the journal is to the center of our
interests, the lower its subscription price, and the longer its embargo,
the less likely I would be to cancel it in favor of Green access to its
content.

Conversely: the further the journal is from our central research
interests, the higher its subscription price, and the shorter its embargo,
the more likely I would be to cancel it in favor of Green access.

All of these are spectrum criteria, of course. But if those who are
pushing for the Greenest-possible publishing policies get what they're
after, there's no way that it will fail to have an impact on
subscriptions. You simply can't give away hamburgers in the same
restaurant where you sell hamburgers and expect to see no impact on
hamburger sales -- even if the ones you're giving away are of mediocre
quality and the ones you're selling are of premium quality. (And yes, yes,
I know that scholarly articles are not the same thing as hamburgers. But
the dynamic is broadly comparable. Researchers may not be thrilled about
settling for easy access to non-versions-of-record and having to request
access to versions of record, but they may well be happier about that
solution than about having another, non-Green journal subscription in
their discipline canceled. And that kind of trade-off is exactly the
reality that we're dealing with here.)

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library, University of Utah
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